High-performing charter management organizations spend more per student at the school level, using some of that money to fund a more teachers per student, writes James Peyser of New Schools Venture Fund in Education Next. The high flyers also invest more in recruiting and developing talented teachers and “building instructional support systems that are grounded in the use of performance data.”

. . . the most successful organizations strive to create enthusiasm for learning and an expectation of college success for all, with a commitment to hard work and persistence in the face of initial failures or setbacks. They have adopted standards-based curricula, with an intensive focus on literacy and numeracy as the first foundation for academic achievement, which typically manifests itself in extra time for reading and math each day and a relatively heavy reliance on direct instruction and differentiated grouping, especially in the early grades. And they are increasingly focused on developing and deploying comprehensive student assessment and coaching systems to ensure more effective and consistent classroom practice, not just from year to year but during the course of each school year.

The five highest-performing CMOs in NewSchools’ portfolio operate 85 schools with more than 28,000 students. Their low-income students have proficiency rates that are more than 25 percentage points higher than those in their local districts.

On average, NewSchools’ CMOs score 9 points higher on reading and math proficiency than district schools, 12 points higher when low-income students are compared and 14 points higher comparing schools open five years or more.

Critics often suggest that superior performance in the charter sector is a result of high levels of attrition, caused by implicit or explicit efforts on the part of school staff to “counsel out” the students who are hardest to educate. Excluding students who move away, our data show average attrition rates of about 12 percent, compared to many schools in high-poverty urban neighborhoods that have annual attrition rates of close to one-third. Interestingly, the highest performers in our portfolio have below-average attrition rates of approximately 9 percent, while the lowest performers have above-average attrition rates of close to 20 percent.

NewSchools CMO students are more likely to graduate from high school than other low-income, minority students and much more likely to enroll in college, Peyser writes.

“KIPP’s success is not simply a mirage that is based on the results of a select number of high achievers who persist through 8th grade,” the researchers write.

A 2010 study by Mathematica found large achievement gains at KIPP schools, even when the scores of students who had left the schools were included, Inside School Research notes.

A Western Michigan study found high attrition for KIPP’s black males, charging that 40 percent of black male students leave between sixth and eighth grade. The study compared two or three KIPP schools to entire school districts.

Mathematica compared individual KIPP schools to neighboring district schools. “Our data is showing that KIPP loses black males overall at a lower rate than the local district schools,” said Christina Clark Tuttle, a senior researcher.

Urban black male students often change schools, whether they attend a district or charter school, but are less likely to leave the district.

KIPP students are more likely to be black or Hispanic and have lower incomes than students in the surrounding school districts, Mathematica confirmed.

A network of 99 schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia, KIPP has been shown to raise the academic achievement of low-income students, especially blacks. Researchers said they wanted to see if that success could be replicated.

The KIPP network received $12,731 in taxpayer money per student, compared with $11,960 at the average traditional public school and $9,579, on average, at charter schools nationwide, the study found. In addition, KIPP generated $5,760 per student from private donors.

KIPP’s per student funding averages between $9,000 and $10,000, according to a KIPP financial official, Mike Wright. The study excluded KIPP’s California schools, which receive less public funding.

Donations for operating expenses in the 2007-8 year were about $2,500 per student, less than half the study’s estimate, Wright said.

KIPP schools use a long school day, a longer school year and Saturday classes to give students more learning time. That costs an extra $1,200 to $1,600 per student. However, the charter network tends to hire young teachers, who cost less, and does not offer small classes.

“As wealthy donors have invested in KIPP, they have helped to demonstrate how a well-endowed, inspirationally run charter school can lift poor children,” (Berkeley Education Professor Bruce) Fuller said. “The question raised by this study is whether the model could be replicated if wealthy donors were to walk away.”

Brookings fellow Grover Whitehurst praised the financial analysis, but not the findings on student attrition, which he said, “use questionable data sources and analytic techniques to push a position that is antagonistic to KIPP.”

Another study of attrition carried out last year by Mathematica Policy Research, he said, used far more sophisticated research techniques to conclude that, on average, KIPP schools did not have significantly higher or lower numbers of students leaving before completion than nearby public schools.

Update: In response to comments, the 2010 Mathematica study looked at achievement over three years for all students who enrolled in 22 KIPP middle schools, including those who left after a year or two. If weaker students were more likely to leave, that would have no effect since the scores of those who left were counted. Three-year gains were very significant, even with this method.

Some KIPP schools replace students who leave with transfers. Others do not. The new study will look at that issue.

Despite below-average test scores in third and fourth grade, KIPP students make substantial gains in math and reading in fifth through eighth grade, concludes a Mathematica study of 22 schools. In half the schools in the study, KIPP students — nearly all low-income and black or Hispanic — made progress equal to an extra year of math and reading instruction, substantially reducing the achievement gap.

Compared to the public schools from which they draw students, KIPP middle schools have student bodies characterized by higher concentrations of poverty and racial minorities, but lower concentrations of special education and limited English proficiency students.

KIPP schools didn’t have systematically higher or lower attrition rates than other schools in the same district, the study found. From Education Week:

“The consistency of the effects across most of the 22 schools and the magnitude of the effects are pretty striking and impressive,” said Brian P. Gill, a senior social scientist for Mathematica and an author of the study. “We do a lot of education studies, and often the effects are nonexistent or quite small.”

KIPPsters are more likely to repeat a grade, especially in fifth and sixth grade, because of KIPP’s reluctance to move students to the next level without mastery of the current grade’s subject matter.

The study compares demographically similar students in the same districts. Presumably parents who sign their children up for KIPP are more motivated and involved than average. But the study found KIPP students were scoring below the district average in elementary school, so that parental involvement hadn’t translated into success pre-KIPP.

Three KIPP schools out of the 22 studied did not show progress. The KIPP Foundation has withdrawn support for two of those schools. Since KIPP’s founding, nine of 91 schools have lost KIPP support for failure to meet standards.